On 10.6.2015 I posted a version of this drawing as a work in progress. Now I think it is done. See the slimy Cyclopean creature rise from the briny depths! Hear the laments of the sailors! “Oh, woe is me, for truly we art fucked,” they cry. Then the water god drags them below and eats their souls.

I passed a personal milestone tonight — this rather strangely positioned pose of a frog is the last drawing for revised Exquisite Corpses (if the fates are willing). I now have 40+ images that need to be colored and 40+ entries that need to be edited, but this is much closer than I imagined being even a couple of weeks ago. So this is what happens when you don’t have much of a social life — you get a lot of work done!

In case you are curious, one has to do a LOT of searching through images of frogs to find one in a pose like this. The frog is sort of in ‘mid leap’ to nab that bug above him. The folds of skin at the crotch are exaggerated (just a little), but with many of the monsters, who do not normally wear pants or collars or togas, one had to take a little artistic license in order to make the ‘mix and match’ tabs work so you can put a frog’s legs on a horse’s body, a human head on a snake’s body, etc.

I’ve recently been reading ‘The Man in the Rockefeller Suit’ by Mark Seal after having finished “Blood will Out” by Walter Kirn. The subject of both of these books is a serial imposter, con-man and murderer who called himself, variously, Chris Chichester, Chris Crow and Clark Rockefeller. His real name is Christian Gehartsreiter and he is originally from a small town in Bavaria, Germany.

The story is fascinating, but Gehartsreiter is obviously a deeply disturbed narcissist who lies compulsively, even when everyone else knows the truth. Maybe he is the consummate real world doppelganger. Maybe he was such a convincing con-man because he actually believes the con. The most interesting part of the story is no one other than Gehartsreiter really knows what his motivations in spending his life impersonating rich people beyond the obvious (wealth and fame). His need to pretend he was someone else seems compulsive.

There’s a fantastic horror story lurking in here — perhaps a kind of diseased monster that resembles a human so closely that no one can tell the difference — not even the monster itself?

I like to see ‘work in progress’ from other people so try to remember to post some of my own. This is about 1/2 done, what you see so far was drawn with a fine tip ‘sharpie’ magic marker on a large (11×14) sketchbook. The paper of the sketchbook is a little too thin for my taste but maybe I just need to get used to it. I haven’t decided if this big guy is made of vines or wood or veins or some other substance — this is just one of those ‘figure it out as I go along’ drawings. Unfortunately, as I was scanning this, my scanner made a horrible noise and I had to unplug it. Hopefully when I plug it back in, the scanner will decide that it is OK and go back to working.

I’ve been looking at some old Basil Wolverton sci-fi comics lately… which helped serve as inspiration in this case… although I think Wolverton would have turned the weird up to 12 and beyond and I’m not even hitting 3. I can always endeavor to do better I guess.